That game completely blew my mind back in the day. At the time when I first picked it up, I wasn't very familiar with role-playing games at all, with the only ones that I ever got into at that point being KOTOR and Mass Effect. I had a much bigger preference for simpler action games, real-time strategies, or racing games, and the only kind of open world games that I played at that point was stuff like GTA. I did play a little bit of Morrowind before Fallout 3, and was certainly intrigued by the open world design (without really realizing it at the time because I was too young and too stupid) but the gameplay was just too janky for me to ever play it for more than just a few hours.
But then along came Fallout 3, and I simply couldn't believe that a game like this could even exist. It was probably the first time since I was a little kid when I played a video game that completely threw me off guard and I just didn't know what to expect. I was so fascinated with everything that it was throwing at me. I still remember the very first time I played it - I went in completely blind, without knowing absolutely anything about Fallout other than just being aware that it exists because I've read about it in a magazine. The first hour or so went by rather slowly but I was still intrigued by the setup and the premise, it was a really novel idea to role-play as a character from the moment they were born and experiencing some snippets of their childhood. I was hooked from the start, but it really wasn't until I finally stepped out of the Vault and laid my eyes on the ruined wasteland when it started to sink in that I'm playing something truly special. Expecting a great adventure, I headed towards the nearest ruins and found my way inside a building that was labeled as some sort of a school. It was there when I also got a bit of a reality check because I honestly didn't expect the game to be so gruesome and dark, with these genuine moments of horror. And that's exactly what I felt when I found out that the structure housed a bunch of crazed lunatics whose favorite pastime was decorating the hallways with dismembered human corpses. I just grabbed any supplies that I could find, fought my way out of there, and still in shock headed towards Megaton whose residents luckily turned out to be much more friendly, if not a bit eccentric.
And then things just kinda snowballed from there. I probably spent somewhere between 200-300 hours exploring the wasteland, marveling at the sheer scale of the game and the way it continuously managed to surprise me with something new and awesome. It felt like no matter which direction I decided to pick, it was pretty much guaranteed that I would soon stumble upon something so awesome that it would be enough to fill a regular linear shooter that I was so used to playing before, and I kept getting amazed that all these quests were just little drops in this vast ocean full of adventures. I still remember randomly stumbling upon a small group of Brotherhood of Steel soldiers who were going somewhere in a hurry, and when I decided to follow them, I ended up participating in this amazing action set-piece during which we took down a Super Mutant Behemoth. Or that one time when I stumbled upon a small settlement full of panicked people who turned out to be terrorized by a bunch of giant ants. Or the first time I found the Oasis and met Harold.
It was such an amazing game and it feels like I managed to play it at just the right time, when I was already familiar with gaming enough to be able to get into a complex RPG like that without too much difficulty, but also not experienced with games with such a rich lore and expansive open worlds to be completely blown away by it. What disappointed me about Fallout 4 was the fact that this magic and fascination, and the feeling of excited apprehension that you feel when you're heading into the unknown, was somehow absent from that game. It mostly just felt like going through the motions, and there was very little in that game that managed to truly take me by surprise or get me excited about exploring new locations. So much of that game just felt like a chore, honestly, and what made things even worse were those crafting mechanics and base building, which I just wasn't interested in doing AT ALL. I ended up playing some of that game, and it had a few decent moments, but honestly, I never even bothered to finish the main storyline, and with each attempt to play it through til the end, I ultimately grew to absolutely hate this game.
Fallout 3 was magical, but Fallout 4 sucks ass.
I can give you my list to make it play better than vanilla Fallout 4, let alone vanilla 3.
